The present invention relates to a demountable coupling device for use in connectors for optical fibers.
Owing to the relatively small size of optical fibers, it is essential when coupling them in series for the fibers to be accurately laterally aligned to avoid excessive loss of light at the coupling point.
There is known in the art a variety of different spring arrangements for aligning optical fibers. U.S. Pat. No. 3,885,859 to Dalgleish et al. discloses an optical fiber connector in which a spring member urges two bare optical fibers into a V-groove for aligning the fibers. U.S. Pat. No. 3,936,145 to McCartney discloses the use of a longitudinally split generally cylindrical spring sleeve into which ferrules connected to optical fibers are pushed for resiliently aligning the ferrules and thus the fibers therein.
An object of the present invention is to provide a very simple and inexpensive optical fiber connection arrangement for precisely laterally aligning optical fibers.